It's the mines, in Africa
That are to blame
Malawi, a bit to my surprise, is overflowing with backpackers, probably due to the fact that it is the most reasonable route connecting Southern and Eastern Africa. What exactly does this mean for me? It means I meet tons of mad people!
My road trip through Malawi began after spending a night on a ferry from Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where we floated at sea for a large portion of the night until the port opened. I was rocked, or perhaps tossed, to sleep listening to the sounds of most of the other passengers vomiting. Two hours after getting off the ferry I boarded a 26 hour train to the Malawi boarder. Getting off the train, I tagged along with two other backpackers to try to find a mtola (old van imported from Asia, often called a dala dala farther north) to the boarder post. At the bus station, we were ushered into a bus office where we were told we could get a bus across the boarder, all the way to Chitimba, the town we were trying to reach by that night. We easily talked the price down from 18,000 shillings to 9,000 shillings -- this was the first bad sign. Then we got loaded onto a "bus" which was actually just an over sized mtola -- 2nd bad sign. Just before we left, our bus man explained through the window that the next bus across the boarder would have our names -- 3rd bad sign. Sure enough, the mtola took twice as long as it should have and dropped us in the village a few kilometers from the boarder. We were immediately swarmed by bicycle taxis, which we reluctantly agreed to ride down to the boarder. As expected, there was no bus once we crossed the boarder. We improvised back to what we had originally planned to do and just took buses and mtolas in stages.
If there is one thing one needs to understand about public transport in the developing world, it is that it is very crowded. I'm not talking 3pm on the 49 in Seattle when all the high school students join you through Capitol Hill; it is literally twice as crowded. One must expect to share his or her seat with at least one other person, if he or she is lucky. If one is not so lucky, the seat will also be occupied by a screaming baby, several chickens and a bag of fish. Up to a certain point, I was happy to have my two new traveling companions with me to share in my misery. One, an older South American man had been understandably getting progressively more irritated, making me less happy to be with him. Enter crazy #1 (or #2 if you count the bus tout). Eventually the South African lost it and started arguing with the bus conductor on our last bus that he had paid for a whole seat, not half a seat. In the end, he gave in, possibly for fear of being kicked off the bus. When we got off, he was continuing on to the next town. He made it clear that he had to have my friend Rachael's seat, practically shoving her out of it as she tried to free herself from all the people. Luckily, we stayed in a nice hostel on the beach along Lake Malawi, where other travelers commiserated with our story, saying countless others had been scammed by the same bus company in Tanzania.
After a quick visit up to Livingstonia, we headed south along the lake to the fishing village/backpacker hangout of Nkhata Bay. We arrived on a Friday evening, when things were very busy due to the weekly Friday night barbecue. This is where we met our next crazy friend. The owner of our hostel in Livingstonia, Mick, had reserved us dorm beds at the Nkhata Bay hostel and given us a ride there, since he was already going to the barbecue to see his old friend Scuba Steve as well as what appeared to be several girlfriends. When we arrived the hostel no longer had beds for us. I don't know if it was because we had arrived with Mick or for some other reason, but the very energetic, overly friendly owner, Gary, decided to give us a room in his house and a staff room for free. We didn't question his generosity.
The next night is when we got a true taste of Gary. My friends Richard and Rachael joined me at the bar with Gary. Gary was already obviously drunk, so drunk in fact that he was shaking and almost teetering off his stool. At times I was almost afraid he was about to have a seizure. He was very excited to have company at the bar and soon began telling us his life story. The ultra condensed version goes something like this: Gary was a successful hairdresser with 8 salons in South Africa, until he discovered crack and became a self proclaimed "crackhead" (he is perhaps the only person I have ever met who has used this term to describe himself). Later, he was captured by his brother and his brother's boyfriend -- this event apparently involved handcuffs, a white leather sofa and perhaps Celine Dion. Eventually he ended up in Malawi running a hostel. The details of how he got to his current situation were very scattered, but seemed to involve him cutting off a girl's arm with an axe.
The last of the crazies I also met at Nkhata Bay. I actually spent four pleasant days on safari in Vwasa Marsh and Nyika Plateau with crazy Australian before he turned into crazy Australian. I think the transformation was brought about by the 24 hour a day drinking binge he began sometime during the safari. During the safari, he told us about living alone in a cabin in Australia for 5 years. At first I was mildly impressed by this, as he was doing worthwhile things, like living off as few resources as possible and reading tons of books; however, I soon realized this time alone either made him a little crazy or pointed to preexisting craziness. The night we returned from safari, he got into an argument with me basically trying to claim that women are the root of all evil and refuse to do worthwhile work like plumbing. Are you confused? I am. Eventually I escaped him, after he berated me for attacking him by apparently saying things I never actually said. The next day he apologized profusely, but then went straight back to drinking. Unfortunately drinking sometimes seems to bring out certain individuals' true unsavory sides.
My friend Richard summed it up by saying that it seemed to him that expats in Malawi inevitably became alcoholics. Unfortunately, I have to agree that this does seem to happen a lot. You'll notice that of all the crazies I talked about, none were actually Malawian.
